From the article:
From the official guidelines of the Louisiana Medicaid Program:
“Louisiana Medicaid covers the epidural injection of an anesthetic substance for the prevention or control of acute pain such as that which occurs during delivery or surgery. Billing of these procedures subsequently for pain management, pain control, or any another reason is not covered. Medicaid does not cover spinal injections to alleviate chronic, intractable pain.
Louisiana Medicaid does not cover any services for chronic pain management.”
While the usefulness of epidural injections outside of potential use for ACUTE PAIN is questionable and if not done correctly can actually increase the pt’s chronic pain and make it basically irreversible condition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnoiditi
Has the war on poverty became a war on the poor that are sick?
I have stated before and will repeat it again here.. as our “new healthcare system” emerges… it would seem like those 5%-10% at each end of the bell curve.. (young/sick or old/sick…) are really going to get screwed
Filed under: General Problems
I’m already getting screwed. Walgreens after seven years not only rufuses to fill my pain prescriptions but I was informed that they won’t fill any written by my Dr.
Gov Jindal didn’t take the Feds money to expand Medicaid in LA because if you remember during the ramming of ACA thru Congress the ‘Cornhusker Kickback? in order to get the votes of reluctant Dems, Sen Nelson (Neb) made a deal that the Feds would pick up almost all of the Medicaid tab for states that expanded Medicaid under ACA for like 3 years This was supposed to be the carrot to get all the states to get on board to put as many people into Medicaid as possible. But like all mandates, after 3 years, states would be stuck for millions of dollars and broke once the money ran out. Don’t forget the ‘single payer system’ was the original healthcare goal of the current Fed administration per the occasional Freudian slips of the former House Majority Leader and and the President himself when he ran for the Senate. So yeah, most of us are screwed or will be.